Berlin producer, singer and live artist VELVE’s latest project began somewhere slightly outside the usual release cycle. Commissioned to compose original techno for the documentary KitKatClub – Kinks of Berlin, she developed that material into Be My Pony, a three-track EP connecting the atmosphere of the film with her own hardware-led approach to electronic music.
Built around 808s, 909s, acid lines and analogue sequencing, the EP moves between tougher, functional techno and more cinematic, emotionally charged territory. With the film arriving in cinemas this September, we caught up with VELVE to talk about composing for the world of KitKatClub, translating music from screen to club, Berlin’s continuing influence on her work, and the relationship between machines, performance and emotion.
Be My Pony began as music composed for KitKatClub – Kinks of Berlin. When you’re writing techno to accompany an image rather than for a dancefloor, what changes in the way you think about tension, pacing and structure?
Yes, the music was composed precisely to the film scenes. I was given the rough cut and tailored the tension, tempo, and structure directly to the image—it actually had very little to do with a classic dancefloor arrangement, an approach I had to abandon for this project.
KitKatClub occupies a very particular place in Berlin’s nightlife history, where music, sexuality and ideas around freedom are closely intertwined. What did you feel you needed to understand about the club before you could represent that world musically, and what did you deliberately avoid?
Music, sexuality and freedom are closely intertwined in several Berlin techno clubs, and as a regular clubgoer, I closely observe music culture. Inside the venues themselves, I listen to which subgenres are breaking through or trending. From these observations, I extract a kind of common denominator—what’s currently driving the Berlin underground—without getting too lost in the style of specific event series.
There’s an interesting question around documenting club culture at all. So much of what makes an underground space meaningful is temporary, private and dependent on actually being there. Do you think film and music can preserve that experience without sanitising or mythologising it?
Generally speaking, music can amplify, support, and accompany such a contemporary document. In the end, it hopefully triggers the theater of the mind.
The EP draws heavily on 808s, 909s, acid and hardware sequencing, a vocabulary that has been part of techno for decades. What separates genuinely engaging with that lineage from simply reproducing the aesthetics of an earlier period?
I chose this sound because to this day, it remains the heart and soul of raw Berlin underground techno. So I tried to match the picture, keep a credible vibe, and create something new at the same time.
“Top the Bottom” resists conventional resolution and relies heavily on repetition. Repetition is one of techno’s most basic tools, but also one of its most difficult to get right. What makes a loop become hypnotic rather than merely repetitive for you?
While listening to a techno track, I think a movie has to start playing in your mind right from the very beginning. When additional elements, introduced in the right places, subconsciously take over and you completely forget you are actually listening to a repetitive kick foundation, then you are getting drawn deeper and deeper into it.
“Be My Pony” puts fragile strings and breathing sounds against a much harder rhythmic framework. Are you interested in techno precisely because it allows apparently contradictory experiences — aggression, intimacy, vulnerability, euphoria — to exist in the same piece of music?
That is a very insightful question. I had never thought about it that way, but you are right—it is a fascinating aspect of techno. Talking about this piece in particular, it is meant to highlight the contrast between the aggressiveness of raw reality on the one hand, and the longing—even on the dancefloor—for intimacy and tenderness on the other hand.
You describe yourself as a producer, singer, composer and live act, and your work moves between clubs, performance and film. Do you see those as separate disciplines, or has working outside conventional techno contexts fundamentally changed what you think a techno track can do?
Yes, and for me, these aren’t just labels—they are completely intertwined. My work in the studio as a producer directly feeds into my live acts, and my experience on the dancefloor shapes how I compose for film. I certainly approach techno from multiple perspectives.
Berlin techno is now both an underground culture and an internationally recognised aesthetic that is constantly being packaged, exported and reproduced. As an artist actually working in the city, what aspects of Berlin’s current electronic music culture do you think outsiders tend to misunderstand?
Berlin is still considered pioneering for techno, and it is absolutely worth diving deep into the subculture of the Berlin underground. We are also hearing a lot of fresh music coming from the UK, the US, and Latin America right now. This cross-cultural exchange has always been a defining element of techno. What is genuinely a shame, however, is that inflation and the aftermath of COVID-19 have left their marks even on the solid walls of Berlin. In many clubs today, you no longer hear handmade quality, but rather just EDM mainstream. It used to be different, and I wish we could get more of that authenticity and artwork back.
